amberfocus | Life is Busy and Fic Update

Most importantly on that list is I got to meet my new great nephew Luke today. He will be five weeks old on Tuesday. He is the spitting image of his father who was born when I was 9 and made me a great aunt when I was only 40, when Zach was born a little over 2 years ago. The baby was all snuggly and happy and sleepy/quiet, which is how I like babies best. I held him for a while while his parents and brother ate breakfast. You forget how heavy newborns get after the first five minutes. I never got to hold Zach the first year because every time the came up I either had bronchitis, the flu, or a stomach virus. The last time I really held a baby was when T was one and he's 12 now.

I also got to pick raspberries with Zach and watch his reaction to the ducks and chickens. He is fascinated by them. T caught a duck so he could pet it and he was very excited, yet managed not to freak the animal out and was very gentle. His parents have been working on gentle with him since the baby was born. His language skills have taken a massive leap since they were here a few months ago. He spoke in long sentences that you could actually understand.

I picked enough raspberries to make jam today, so that is on the agenda. Yesterday I made and canned yellow mustard.

(Wow, that's big. I really need to buy some photo editing software so I can shrink my photos again.) It turned out really well and was super easy, so I think I may try my hand at Dijon, brown deli mustard, hot Chinese mustard, and honey mustard in the future. I am the only one who really eats normal mustard around here and so making it seemed like a better option than buying super large containers that get runny and gross before I can use them up. I canned 2 half pints and had a little less than 1/4 cup left that I fridged to start using right away.

My garden is really taking off in the heat. I am glad. We had such a wet, cold June that I wasn't sure it was going to do much of anything but after the last few days you can see visible changes in the plants daily. If this keeps up I will have tomatoes coming out my ears at the end of harvest season. Which is what I want. I want enough to can 52 quarts of tomato puree. That should get me through the year.

I'm halfway through Joel Salatin's book Everything I Want to Do is Illegal. Another interesting read, although parts of it are very similar to Folks, That Ain't Normal, including some of the stories he tells. I'm like, "Didn't I just read this?" I had that same sort of thing going on when I was reading Michael Pollan's books, too. It's not like whole chapters were lifted out of one and plopped into the other, but it is extremely noticable. I found Folks to more educational and informative and Illegal to be more entertaining to read.

I haven't been writing too much lately. I just haven't really wanted to. We've been swimming and working in the garden and canning and of course baking bread and making everything else from scratch, which is time-consuming, but worth it. I have a few hours to myself today that I am going to try to spend writing. I really want to finish the final draft of the last chapter of You're What? so I can be done. It's been hanging out there mocking me for a while. I just need to find some motivation.

As for anything else...I just don't know. I don't know when anything will be forthcoming. I am just so...blah right now about it all. I probably need to rewatch seasons one and two again to get my mojo back, but I don't know where I'd find the 24 hours this week to do that.